𝙾 𝙲 𝙲 𝚄 𝙻 𝚄 𝙼

by Amanda Mitzel

Hello
Hallowed
I try the shapes out on
the iron flats of my tongue
while my mind hulks through,
whispers into cabinets, bursts
through doors, dies out by the
poppies in the plain of the yard.
I’m sorry for all that, you know—
that thing where I turned my body
into a circus. (And, to think, for all
that vaudeville, I never felt a thing.)
So now I watch the lightning die
in the sky. It opened like the faces
of daisies. Great stones fall, shake
to Earth, scare the children of deer.
My throat unpeels—hot magma,
bristle-bright, all steaming past the
ice plains of my teeth. I watch to
see—will I bend or burn this time,
what the carbon black of me will
become. A dry palm hunches
forward. A rat picks at the lines of
its soft, still belly. I wait to see if
I’ll come back this time.

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Amanda Mitzel writes horror and poetry in a cabin in the woods. She has been published in Strange Horizons, Weird Lit Magazine, Moonday Mag, and more. Her chapbook, We Are All Made of Glory & Soft, White Light, was published by Bottlecap Press. She can be found at amandamitzel.com and on IG @amanda.mitzel.